Lindsey Graham says he didn’t know we had large troop presence in Niger, but it’s NOT because he wasn’t told!

by The Right Scoop

Lindsey Graham is claiming that he didn’t know we had so many troops in Niger and he wants to know why:

CNN – “I didn’t know there was 1,000 troops in Niger,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” Sunday. “They are going to brief us next week as to why they were there and what they were doing.”

He continued: “I got a little insight on why they were there and what they were doing. I can say this to the families: They were there to defend America. They were there to help allies. They were there to prevent another platform to attack America and our allies.”

Graham also said during the interview that his longtime friend and colleague in the Senate, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, is frustrated, “rightly so.”

“We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing. So John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question (about) why we were there,” he said. “We’ll know how many soldiers are there, and if somebody gets killed there, that we won’t find out about it in the paper.”

It actually sounds like he didn’t know we had any troops in Niger given the context of what he said about McCain, but his spokesperson said this:

Thanks to Sean Davis, we now know that Lindsey Graham was told that we had troops in Niger. It turns out earlier this year in March the Armed Services Committee was briefed on it by AFRICOM and he was present:

09 In West Africa, our primary focus is countering and
10 degrading Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa. Since 2011, Boko
11 Haram has consistently carried out attacks against civilians
12 and targeted partner regional governments and military
13 forces in the Lake Chad Basin region. With forces from
14 Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, we are working
15 with the multinational joint task force located in Niger to
16 enable regional cooperation and expand partner capacity to
17 ensure Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa do not further
18 destabilize the region.

19 The multinational joint task force has been successful
20 in enabling multinational cooperation and coordinating
21 multinational operations and placed a significant pressure
22 on Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa.

In that very briefing, Graham asked 20 questions and none of them were about Niger:

It wasn’t just Graham who says he didn’t know. Several others, including Chuck Schumer claim the same thing. But it’s not as if the government was keeping this a big secret. Obama sent a letter in 2015 to the Speaker of the House that included:

Military Operations in Niger in Support of U.S. Counterterrorism Objectives

United States military personnel in Niger continue to provide support for intelligence collection and to facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in the Sahel and with other partners in the region. The total number of U.S. military personnel deployed to Niger is approximately 350.

In June of this year Trump sent a letter to both the Speaker of the House and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate (Orrin Hatch):

Lake Chad Basin Region. United States military personnel in the Lake Chad Basin continue to provide a wide variety of support to African partners conducting counterterrorism operations in the region. In Niger, there are approximately 645 United States military personnel deployed to support these missions. In Cameroon, approximately 300 United States military personnel are also deployed, the bulk of whom are supporting United States airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations in the region. These forces are equipped with weapons for the purpose of providing their own force protection and security, and they will remain in Cameroon, with the consent of the Government of Cameroon, until their support is no longer needed.

Now I guess it’s possible that Orrin Hatch didn’t share this information with members of the Senate Armed Services committee, but it just seems to me that Graham and other Senator’s lack of knowledge on this wasn’t because the government was keeping them in the dark. Maybe Graham should have asked more questions about Niger back in March when they had their Africom briefing.


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